Arlington, Northwest claim tourney victories

Alex Niecikowski and and Arlington Post 208 thumped the Chicago Patriots 20-8 in 7 innings Wednesday in the semifinals of the winner's bracket of the 1st Division Cook County Legion tournament at Recreational Park in Arlington Heights.

Every batter had a hit for Arlington (16-13) to help it advance to Thursday's winner's bracket game. They will play at 7:00 p.m. against Northwest Legion, a 2-0 winner over Mt. Prospect.

Niecikowski, who played at Rolling Meadows two seasons ago and is now at Hill College in Texas, led a 15-hit attack with 3 hits and 5 RBI.

"I felt good at the plate tonight," Niecikowski said. "I was trying to do the same thing every time and that was to put the ball in play and try and score some runs."

Niecikowski said his team needed to hit like it did on Wednesday.

"We hit well as a team today," Niecikowski said. "It was a lot more runs than we expected, but that is always a good thing."

Sean Delacruz also had 3 hits for Arlington and drove in 3 runs. Jack O'Neill and Nick Donzelli each had 2 hits while Jake Cavaiani had a hit and 3 RBI.

Arlington batted around in the fourth and sixth innings, scoring 8 runs in each.

"We hit the ball well tonight," Arlington coach Dennis Drolet said. "And we needed to do that because they are a scrappy team."

Drolet says he knows his team will need to be focused when it plays Northwest Legion, which Arlington defeated earlier this season 7-4.

"We have had one bad inning where we threw the ball around in each of the our last two games," Drolet said. "But tomorrow is a different ball game. We are going to have to refocus from the first pitch on."

Northwest Legion 2, Mt. Prospect 0: Brendan Beck threw a complete game shutout to advance Northwest Legion Post 690. Beck, who is from Schaumburg, threw just 94 pitches, fanning 11 while walking none and scattering 4 hits.

"Brendan was amazing today," Northwest coach Kevin Miller said. "He had complete command of all three of his pitches. It was one of the best pitching performances I have ever seen."

Joey Lopez, who had 2 hits for Northwest (16-9), figured prominently in both of their runs. He had a safety squeeze to drive in Alex Kiszkowski, and Lopez later scored the other run.